Notice the third tier of Game Console Energy Star specs went into effect July 1 2012. FCC filing for the PS3 4000 chassis July 2012.

There are EU power regulations for Always on Standby mode with exceptions for "special features". Standby is 500mw but special exceptions are allowed and I have not been able to find the power that is authorized. It applies to the PS4 and Xbox 720. The always on mode for the Xbox and PS4 is not required to be 500mw, read the exceptions and use cases. One has a game console able to turn on a Blu-ray player and control as well as play the blu-ray in the player; RVU should allow such a use case.

One of the arguments for a total redesign of both PS3 and Xbox 360 was low power modes being mandated by California within about 18 months. Either it's done at this refresh @ 32nm or the next @ 22nm. I just discovered that the EPA energy Star Voluntary compliance third tier was schedule for July 1 2012 and the PS3 4000 chassis FCC listing also occurred July 2012. That makes this refresh more likely for a total redesign.

Scope Revision

• Stakeholders commented that earlier models may not meet performance requirements
• EPA proposes that game consoles brought to market prior to January 1, 2011 are excluded from the scope of the performance requirements

Stakeholders (game console manufacturers that are part of the Energy Star rating system) commented that earlier models may not meet performance requirements. This means there was a consensus arrived at for newer models and they all complied. Only if Sony is voluntarily a member "stakeholder" would this apply to the PS3 4000 chassis. There are only 3 game console platforms, we know WiiU should comply and the wording is plural. Sill doesn't confirm the PS3 4000 chassis but either PS3, Xbox 360 or both.

Both Xbox 361 and PS3 4000 chassis would have to drop from about 60 watts to 35 watts for Active Navigation Menu. That is a dramatic drop that would require a total redesign with GPU Zero power (AMD's Zero power for GPU is 5 watts and only supported by a more modern GPU than in the Xbox 360S and for sure RSX) and a partial shutdown of some of the CPUs (Cell can't partially shutdown but individual 1PPU3SPU CPU packages could).

For the first time (Couldn't comply with second tier and were exempted " game consoles brought to market prior to January 1, 2011 are excluded from the scope of the performance requirements") we might see the PS3 4000 chassis comply with Energy Star for game consoles. Since we are going to see the Xbox 361 and PS3 4000 chassis sold to casual gamers and XTV-IPTV users, Energy Star would be a sales necessity or rather not being Energy Star rated when WiiU complies would be a serious disadvantage.

For the Xbox 361 I believe coming this season, HDMI pass-thru already implies power modes but those multi-media "Set Top Box" power modes were exempted by request from stakeholders; reasoning was the multiple features made a "standard" for power draw too difficult to calculate. With hardware that can comply with Energy Star Tier 3 low power modes it should also be possible to support low power modes for HDMI pass-thru.

The 16 gig SSD Flash drive in the PS3 4000 chassis and rumored in the PS4 is too large for a special place for patches.

Originally Posted by http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=38657020&postcount=1

In total, during the launch two PlayStation 4 are available, both are only equipped with a hard drive larger than 320GB. In terms of bundles, there are no concrete plans at Sony. What the exact difference between the two we do not know, but this is probably just the hard drive size. Also, the PS4 will have a special place for patches, OS etc. this is stored on an internal 16 GB of flash storage. just a "special place for patches".

I suspect that it's used as a cache for the OS and background tasks to allow the Hard Disk to sleep reducing power during; "Active navigation menu 35W".

Originally Posted by http://eda360insider.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/3d-week-driven-by-economics-its-now-one-minute-to-3d/

According to the data gleaned from presentations by Samsung, Toshiba, AMD, and others, 3D IC assembly gives you the equivalent performance boost of 2 IC generations (assuming Dennard scaling wasn’t dead). Garrou then quoted AMD’s CTO Byran Black, who spoke at the Global Interposer Technology 2011 Workshop last month. AMD has been working on 3D IC assembly for more than five years but has intentionally not been talking about it. AMD’s 22nm Southbridge chips will probably be the last ones to be “impacted by scaling” said Black. AMD’s future belongs to partitioning of functions among chips that are process-optimized for the function (CPU, Cache, DRAM, GPU, analog, SSD) and then assembled as 3D or 2.5D stacks.

The above is another point, both PS4 and PS3 4000 chassis have 16 gig SSD memory which is mentioned as part of AMDs building blocks to be included in SoCs. This would be necessasary as mentioned above to comply with Energy Star power modes, the OS would have to manage this turning on and off the hard disk as needed. And in addition in Xbox 361 and PS3 4000 it can be used as a small SSD Disk Drive. In the PS4 and Xbox 720 (see powerpoint link below) I suspect both will be background serving to handhelds and would require more SSD memory for that feature eliminating the use of the SSD drive as a user Drive like in the PS3 4000 chassis. There are security advantages to a SSD flash inside a SoC. It would not require encryption which in turn allows for a faster OS in addition to the already faster SSD drive/cache.

SSD Vs. Hard Disk 2 watts vs 6 watts Edit: Misleading as it's for a 3.5 inch drive. Smaller 2.5 inch laptop drives with slower transfer speeds average 2 watts or less. I can't find any figures for larger 500 gig drives with faster transfer speeds when active, it's always average. SSD specs are idle .08 watts for the best and 4 watts @ 520 mb/sec. At slower transfer speeds they should use less and average power considering they will be active for 1/5th the time should be half or less of a Hard Disk, if very active like when decoding/encoding a video stream with limited memory much less for SSD.

There are a number of reasons for SSD drives but I don't think costs factor into the choices just as apparently power is not as much of a factor either. 130 gig 2.5 inch drives are $35.00 and a stand alone SSD 16 gig drive has many of the same overheads but less value for the consumer. A encrypted serial Flash memory module can be attached to a ePCI buss cheaper than a SSD drive and perform faster. Faster means less average active power draw, faster boot, faster memory swaps and a simpler OS. If it's attached to the motherboard and there is a letter from Sony stating all motherboards are identical then these advantages are probably seen in all PS3 4000 chassis models even if they have a Hard Disk. 1+ watts saved at an active menu and a snappier OS. Edit:1.5 watts saved per hour in having a Hard Disk sleep adds up over a year so long term this can be significant.

Edit: 11/2012 The PS3 4K chassis does not use the SSD flash as expected above and is not a total redesign as I speculated. This leaves the next 22nm refresh (if it happens) and that should be before the California law goes into effect. I should have taken the Linkedin #7 above more seriously as it has PS3 work at 22nm skipping 32/28nm as also mentioned in a article "Sony skipping 32nm for Cell".

Charlie at SimiAccurate just finding out about Oban is amazing. At the time months ago, his speculation was something that made sense. It's always sticking your neck out when speculating that early. My last comment was not meant as criticism of Charlie but to show that new information points to Oban as a Xbox 360 refresh we NOW have proof is coming. Without my finding the Xbox 720 powerpoint and the Linkedin IBM employee cites it was not possible to seriously confirm a Xbox 361 is coming.

If game consoles complied with Energy Star tier 3 requirements this refresh then it has massive implications for the refresh design. Anyone have ideas on what would have to be done to reduce the Xbox 360S from 67 watts to 35 watts for the dashboard Energy Star Spec? My understanding is that just moving from 45nm to 32nm won't do it. Same question for a PS3 refresh.

Charlie at SimiAccurate just finding out about Oban is amazing. At the time months ago, his speculation was something that made sense. It's always sticking your neck out when speculating that early. My last comment was not meant as criticism of Charlie but to show that new information points to Oban as a Xbox 360 refresh we NOW have proof is coming. Without my finding the Xbox 720 powerpoint and the Linkedin IBM employee cites it was not possible to seriously confirm a Xbox 361 is coming.

If game consoles complied with Energy Star tier 3 requirements this refresh then it has massive implications for the refresh design. Anyone have ideas on what would have to be done to reduce the Xbox 360S from 67 watts to 35 watts for the dashboard Energy Star Spec? My understanding is that just moving from 45nm to 32nm won't do it. Same question for a PS3 refresh.

My simple argument for especially Sony not going to the massive trouble of doing a complete and , I imagine, a very expensive re-design is there is nothing/little to gain.

The 360/PS3 are virtually EOL. Sony decided against doing such an extensive re-design with the slim due to cost ie: shrinking Cell/RSX as is rather than re-designing them.

And the slim has gone on to ship 30+ million units?

If a theoretical combined Cell/RSX @32nm halved the power consumption it would go from ~45W to 22.5W. I don't know what if anything can be saved from other parts like HDD,WiFi ect, but I doubt it would be much.

Can it technically be done? Sure. Would/should MS/Sony do it? IMO, no.

My simple argument for especially Sony not going to the massive trouble of doing a complete and , I imagine, a very expensive re-design is there is nothing/little to gain.

The 360/PS3 are virtually EOL.

And the slim has gone on to ship 30+ million units?

If a theoretical combined Cell/RSX @32nm halved the power consumption it would go from ~45W to 22.5W. I don't know what if anything can be saved from other parts like HDD,WiFi ect, but I doubt it would be much.

Can it technically be done? Sure. Would/should MS/Sony do it? IMO, no.

Just my layman's view.

The last 4 PS3 refreshes had the following power savings: 20-10-5-4 The small numbers for the last few are because it's only been either RSX or Cell that had power savings not both at the same time. But do you see a trend, power savings get smaller with die size reductions it's not half or some ratio that's fixed. My impression is that just reducing from 45nm to 32nm is not going to reduce; Xbox for example, from 67 to 35 watts. The figures I used above are for the XMB menu where most of the power savings is in idle current. For full on game use the savings in die size reductions are (supposed to be) less (20-11-5-1). The last was PS3 3000 chassis where only the manufacturing technique for the Cell was changed.

EOL for PS3 and Xbox....My OPINION is no, I think they will last longer than previous generations. What's coming this Sept will support the PS3 and Xbox for many years. You do know that PS4 and Xbox 720 are designed to serve to Xbox 360 and PS3 (as well as handhelds) and at least the Xbox 720 plans are to have Xbox 720 games played on the Xbox 360 remotely.

Sony decided against doing such an extensive re-design with the slim due to cost ie: shrinking Cell/RSX as is rather than re-designing them.

This is supportable from comments in 2010 that Sony was skipping 32nm for 22nm and the Linkedin cite not having any work at IBM on 32nm for PS3 but some work at 22nm. The only thing I can counter with are:

1) why refresh if just moving things around with a smaller 1 pound lighter case.
2) The Digitmes PS4 rumor must be a PS3
3) This leaves only Xbox 361 with an Energy Star rating, HDMI pass-thru and the ability to massively cut prices when the Xbox 720 is released.

Either Sony is planning to drop the PS3, EOL soon true with PS4 priced low enough to replace the PS3 market slot or there is a massive PS3 redesign planned for 32nm or 22nm. If at 32nm it looks like Sony would be using the same design/chip that Microsoft is using. If @ 22nm then a typical redesign with Microsoft doing the same at a much lower price as they would be riding on AMD R&D for 22nm GPU and support chips.

Anyway I didn't intend this thread be an argument about the PS3 4000 refresh, it's much larger that that. ALL including next generation PS4 and Xbox 720 will try to voluntarily design to meet Tier 3 energy uses. This impacts the next generation design and should be part of any discussion involving next generation.

The last 4 PS3 refreshes had the following power savings: 20-10-5-4 The small numbers for the last few are because it's only been either RSX or Cell that had power savings not both at the same time. But do you see a trend, power savings get smaller with die size reductions it's not half or some ratio that's fixed. My impression is that just reducing from 45nm to 32nm is not going to reduce; Xbox for example, from 67 to 35 watts. The figures I used above are for the XMB menu where most of the power savings is in idle current. For full on game use the savings in die size reductions are (supposed to be) less (20-11-5-1). The last was PS3 3000 chassis where only the manufacturing technique for the Cell was changed.

EOL for PS3 and Xbox....My OPINION is no, I think they will last longer than previous generations. What's coming this Sept will support the PS3 and Xbox for many years. You do know that PS4 and Xbox 720 are designed to serve to Xbox 360 and PS3 (as well as handhelds) and at least the Xbox 720 plans are to have Xbox 720 games played on the Xbox 360 remotely.

This is supportable from comments in 2010 that Sony was skipping 32nm for 22nm and the Linkedin cite not having any work at IBM on 32nm for PS3 but some work at 22nm. The only thing I can counter with are:

1) why refresh if just moving things around with a smaller 1 pound lighter case.
2) The Digitmes PS4 rumor must be a PS3
3) This leaves only Xbox 361 with an Energy Star rating, HDMI pass-thru and the ability to massively cut prices when the Xbox 720 is released.

Either Sony is planning to drop the PS3, EOL soon true with PS4 priced low enough to replace the PS3 market slot or there is a massive PS3 redesign planned for 32nm or 22nm. If at 32nm it looks like Sony would be using the same design/chip that Microsoft is using. If @ 22nm then a typical redesign with Microsoft doing the same at a much lower price as they would be riding on AMD R&D for 22nm GPU and support chips.

Anyway I didn't intend this thread be an argument about the PS3 4000 refresh, it's much larger that that. ALL including next generation PS4 and Xbox 720 will try to voluntarily design to meet Tier 3 energy uses. This impacts the next generation design and should be part of any discussion involving next generation.

Indeed. This will be better for the consoles. I dont think it'll hamper overall performance, but instead would make companies create highly efficient systems.

ALL including next generation PS4 and Xbox 720 will try to voluntarily design to meet Tier 3 energy uses. This impacts the next generation design and should be part of any discussion involving next generation. Then we also have mandated Game console power specs by California at about the same time the next generation is released.

Sweetvar26 said months ago that both Durango and Orbis would have 2 Jaguar CPU packages = 8 CPUs and a recent tweek leak says the CPU in Durango is 1.6Ghz which is Jaguar's CPU speed in Kabini.

Originally Posted by https://twitter.com/marcan42

If you want more evidence that MHz isn't everything, a little birdie points out that Durango (Xbox 720) is specc'ed to have a 1.6GHz CPU.

I think the point is you have to have Jaguar CPUs to support low power and the other CPUs can be gated off. If you only have Steamroller packages of 2 CPUs each you don't have a low power option.

I think both game consoles will be media servers and the difference between the power used by 1 Jaguar package (4 jaguar CPUs) Vs. 1 Steamroller CPU package of 2 CPUs being active is enough to impact total power. The EPA goldstar standard is currently 45 watts for streaming but the Nasne is 2 watts, Roku, and USB Android sticks are all around 5 watts or less...much less than the current 45 watts. I suspect the standards are going to be revised down for media streaming (45 watts) and active menu (35 watts) and there will be a new power standard for standby server mode = Idle?.

Originally Posted by http://www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/2013rulemaking/documents/proposals/12-AAER-2A_Consumer_Electronics/Entertainment_Software_Associations_Proposal_%E2%80%93_Game_Consoles_2013-07-29_TN-71739.pdf

One of the notable aspects of the new generation of hardware is the shift from the highly
customized architecture of the prior generation to a hardware configuration that relies
upon more general-purpose chipsets. By switching to this more standardized
architecture, console makers are able to more readily implement new, energy efficient
chipsets, as appropriate for use in home game consoles, than was possible with more
highly customized chipsets